Now that Yom Kippur is over, I would like to share with you my two final sermons in this year's High Holiday series. Pasted below is my sermon from Kol Nidrei, the night of Yom Kippur, and I will also post shortly my Yom Kippur morning sermon; the final in my series on "Ahavah," "Love." As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated.
Shanah
Tovah!
What
does the Book of Life mean to you? How are we to understand this ledger, this
peculiar concept, which dominates our High Holiday liturgy in general, and our
Yom Kippur services in particular. We just sang about it: “B’Seifer Chayim,
B’rachah v’Shalom, u’Farnasah Tovah, Nizacheir v’Nikateiv l’fanecha” -
“Remember us,” O’ God, and “write us into” “The Book of Life, Blessing, Peace,
and Good Fortune.” More than just this one song, we actually refer to the Book
of Life A LOT throughout the holiday. We greet one another on Yom Kippur with,
“G’mar Chatimah Tovah,” “In the end, may you be sealed for good”? And we also
say “L’Shanah Tovah Teichateimu,” “May you be sealed for a good year.” All of
these images, and many others in our High Holiday prayers, speak of being
written, signed, inscribed, and sealed in God’s Book of Life. We rarely spend
too much time unpacking this, but tonight, in light of this year’s High Holiday
theme, we must.
Every
year, I speak on one, single topic across four High Holiday sermons. Two were
delivered on Rosh Hashanah, tonight is number three, and I’ll offer one final
sermon tomorrow morning; all four - this year - are on the subject of “Ahavah,”
“Love.” Last week, we spoke about “Love Your Neighbor As Yourself” and “Love
Peace and Truth,” and tonight let’s delve into the enormous, intimidating, and
so crucially central topic of “God’s Love.” And so, I feel compelled to look at
the song we just sang, and how we are all impacted by the image of God’s Book
of Life. Many of us struggle deeply with this idea, and the ramifications which
accompany it. Traditional Jewish theology tells us that there is a Book of Life
and a separate Book of Death, and our actions before, during, and even
immediately after the High Holidays determine our fate; will God write our
names in one book or the other for the Jewish year that is about to begin. “Mi
yichyeh u’mi Yamut?” we ask in the famous (or perhaps infamous…) Untane Tokef
prayer - “who will live and who will die” in the year ahead?
This
notion hurts us a lot. If we imagine that God is making deliberate, willful,
intentional decisions about our lives, we feel angry. How and why are you
choosing my fate? If we believe that God has answers in mind for the questions
of who will live and who will die, who by cancer, flooding, dementia, and car
accident - we feel furious! “YOU did this??” “You made this happen?!?” It hurts
too much to entertain these ideas. Yet how can we not? And if we want to speak
of God’s Love, can we do so without facing these horrible, painful, but
ever-present questions?
On
Rosh Hashanah, I shared with you that earlier this summer I spent some time in
England, and saw the beautiful redone sanctuary of the New North London
Synagogue, with three quotes on love from the Torah carved into its walls.
Front and center, right about their enormous, 20 ft. Ark, was written:
“v’Ahavta et Adonai Eloheicha,” “Love the Lord, your God,” and many of us know
that the quote continues, “b’Chol Levav’cha, uv’Chol Nafshecha, uv’Chol
Meodecha” - “with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.” How can
we do that, love God at all, let alone with our entire being, when we’re
sitting here contemplating these Books of Life and Death, and the implications
they might have? And while we’re here, pushing the envelope and asking these tough
questions of the Almighty, I’ve simply got to ask… is it reciprocal? If I can
get there, if I COULD, somehow, push myself to truly love Adonai with my entire
heart, my deepest soul, and all my might, will God do the same? When God
commands my love, will I get it back in return? Or will I be the tragic lover
in a Shakespeare play, pouring my heart out to my beloved, only to learn that
my feelings are embarrassingly and heart-breakingly unrequited?
We
sing, over and over, on the holidays about the Thirteen Attributes of God,
“Adonai, Adonai, Eil Rachum v’Chanun,” and we list each of God’s praiseworthy
characteristics. Kindness, compassion, faithfulness, forgiving… Why doesn’t the
list include some form of “Ahavah”? Does God not love us?
On
the High Holidays, we say that we are here to ask big questions. Rabbis often
use this speaking opportunity to challenge our thinking about Israel or
anti-Semitism. But tonight I feel that we need to turn our attention to God,
and to our relationship with our Creator; if indeed we believe there is a
Creator out there, responsible for breathing life into us in the first place.
It is so, so painful to feel alone. And sometimes we look up at the sky, or we
read about death and destruction in the news, and we search inside ourselves,
and we do, we feel alone. Today, on this holiest day of the Jewish year, should
we not ask ourselves, one another, and the Heavens above, about God’s Love?
Easy
answers are hard to come by. Of course they are. But let us ask the question
nonetheless. And let me turn to our ancestors, the sages who lived thousands of
years before us, for guidance, as they struggled with these very same
issues as well. In fact, they often lived with the threats of violence as a
part of their everyday, ongoing lives, so if they found a way to understand and
come to peace with loving God, being commanded to do so, and feeling God’s love
in return, we certainly can as well. The great sage, Rashi (whose hometown of
Troyes, in France, I also visited in June, by the way), wrote that to love God
was to perform God’s commandments out of love. In other words, the way we
express our love for God is not through love letters, chocolate boxes, or a
dozen roses;
it’s
through living our lives with tremendous love, kindness, compassion, and
forgiveness towards ALL of God’s Creation. When we love that which God loves,
then we are expressing our love for God as well. And this, I believe, is our
first step towards understanding this issue a little bit better.
In
just a few days, our lives will all be impacted by an historic visit here in
Philadelphia. As you are all most certainly aware, Pope Francis will be arriving
on Friday. And more than perhaps most people, our current pope understands that
loving God IS a commandment, and it is lived by loving others around us. Pope
Francis recently stated: “We must restore hope to young people, help the old,
be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to
include the excluded and preach love.” I am a big fan of his. Pope Francis cuts
to the core of difficult issues, strips away all pretense, and addresses
critical topics unapologetically. He knows how to put his faith into action,
and he feels, deeply, that compassion and love are at the center of our
existence.
But
our big struggle actually wasn’t trying to figure out how WE should love God;
we wanted to know IF God loves US, and how THAT is being expressed! We want to
know, is it reciprocal… and perhaps more painful to ask: why - sometimes, even
often, do we not feel loved? Let’s return to the Thirteen Attributes of God.
The word “Ahavah” may be absent, but actually the totality of all these
other behaviors - kindness, compassion, forgiving, faithful - IS love.
Each
of the thirteen Hebrew words like Chesed, Rachamim, Chanun, each has its own
meaning, but each is also a synonym for love. And these attributes of God, they
are not action-driven or mighty, like “conqueror of enemies” or “curer of
Alzheimer’s Disease.” God’s role in our lives is to partner with us, as a
source of kindness, compassion, and strength in difficult times. God does not
step in and stop weather storms or prevent dictators from rising to power, but
is ever-present to give us courage, hope, inspiration, and of course, love IF
we are willing to let God in. When we look to the sky and expect God to remove
hunger from the world, we are sorely disappointed. But when we instead look
around and see that all the food the planet needs IS here, we may, perhaps,
instead pray for God to speak to all of our hearts and lovingly urge us to
distribute it more equitably. God is present, the question is really whether
our eyes and our souls are open to see and feel that closeness. The 13th
Century Persian poet, Rumi, wrote: “Your task is not to seek love, but merely
to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against
it.” We need to open ourselves up and remove the barriers, then love will find
us.
Joe
Rosenstein is the author of a siddur called Eit Ratzon, which contains
wonderful meditations and thought-provoking prayers. It also contains one of my
favorite reimaginings of how we understand God’s role in our lives. The second
paragraph of the Shema is very hard for us to accept. Much like God’s Book of
Life, we struggle with this passage from Deuteronomy, chapter 11. It speaks of
the consequences for disobedience to God’s laws, and specifically God’s
withholding rain on our fields, which we all know causes droughts and
starvation. Again, it is painful to imagine God doing these things on purpose.
But Rosenstein reads it differently: “If you listen to My commandments, [says
God,] and you do them, the rain that falls on your fields will also fall in
your lives, enabling EVERYTHING to grow.” In other words, when we live with
compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and courage, and we accept a sense of
commandedness in our lives, all kinds of things grow and flourish, in a literal
AND metaphorical sense. Not because God will now show us favor, but rather
we’ve created a good life, filled with blessings and strong relationships which
are themselves a reward. Even when bad things happen, we are rooted and
fortified, and emotionally able to face challenges, illnesses, and hardship.
Our eyes are open to the symbolic rain, the bounty, that is all around us.
Perhaps
most powerfully, Rosenstein then turns it around. He writes: “If you turn away
from My commandments, then you will also turn away from My rain; you will no
longer be aware of this blessing and its source, so that, for you, the rain
will no longer exist.” It is not physical rain which God withholds. The
commandments are a tool to make us aware of all the beauty and wonder in our
lives, and if we instead choose to live without meaning, then how could
we possibly feel and perceive the blessings that exist all around us? When we
come to services on Yom Kippur and take stock of our lives and seek to make
real change - we are actually writing ourselves into the Book of Life.
This is the message I want to say to you all here tonight. It is not God who
writes us in that book. Living a life of meaning and purpose, being able to ask
forgiveness of another and accept it back fully and wholeheartedly, being
vulnerable and introspective, and yes, able to really see and feel love in our
lives, giving it and receiving it - doing all these things is equivalent to
writing ourselves into a book of life; a book of living, truly and fully
living.
There
is also pain and hardship, misfortune and illness in our lives. When we are
angry and wounded, we ascribe our misery to God because it at least gives us a
focus for our outrage. And our wrath IS often justified. But I do not believe
that God is sending these things to punish us. I cannot. Rabbi Jonathan
Wittenberg, the rabbi of that synagogue in London, writes about pain and love,
suffering and perseverance. He describes seeing people who have experienced
deep loss or hurt working within themselves to tell an inner story which helps
them integrate and cope with their situation. He writes, “we may not be able to
change the facts of what has happened to us, but… we are able to determine, at
least in part, what it SHOULD mean in our souls and in our lives.”
Sometimes
it can feel like a loved one, trying to offer a hug, to hold us, but we are too
filled with rage to even notice their presence. God has not abandoned us, but
sometimes it hurts too much to feel the embrace. This is hard work. That is why
our Torah tells us to experience God’s love “b’Chol Levavcha, uv’Chol
Nafshecha, uv’Chol Meodecha,” “with all your heart, soul, and might.” If you
want to feel it, it is there. But we have to be willing to let love in. And, as
Pope Francis reminds us, to spread it to others as well.
I
hope that this Yom Kippur will be for you, for every one of us, a meaningful
and introspective holiday. Use this time to have an honest conversation with
yourself, and - if you want it to - that mindful introspection WILL also be a
conversation with God. Our ancient Talmud teaches us: “It is not sufficient to
leave God’s love in heaven; it must be in our hearts and hands.” Think about
how you could better experience the rain and bounty that is already falling in
your life, and what it might look like for you - with a full heart, an open
soul, and with dedicated might - to bring this love down from heaven and write
YOURSELF into the Book of Real Living in the year ahead.
Shanah
Tovah!
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